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ASJA CONTRACTS WATCH 46 (vol 4, #7) CW970527 May 27, 1997
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News of LOS ANGELES TIMES, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, COOKING LIGHT, SESAME STREET PARENTS, FAMILYFUN, more...
In an odd move for a newspaper whose parent is currently in litigation over theft of electronic rights, the LOS ANGELES TIMES has been pulling articles by freelance writers who protest their work's appearance in electronic form without their consent.
Several writers tell ASJA Contracts Watch that the newspaper's legal department has responded to complaints by removing their articles from the Times site on the World Wide Web and from online database archives available through Lexis-Nexis, Dialog, Dow Jones, CompuServe and other services. The corrections are being made even as the flagship paper's parent, TIMES MIRROR CO., argues in court that putting articles into text-only archival databases requires no special license or payment to authors because it's merely another way of distributing a publication.
Times Mirror is one of the few publishers who offer this argument. Judges who entertain it might well ask if publishers commonly run from newsstand to newsstand, and from library to library, slicing articles out of paper and microfilm archives.
No one can say NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC doesn't move fast. Just days after a National Geographic Society officer told Contracts Watch that his staff was trying to figure out how to clear rights for its upcoming giant 108-year CD-ROM, the Society has announced its decision. A letter sent last week to some 2,500 photographers and writers tells how much they'll be paid for National Geographic's reuse of their work: $0.
According to Larry Lux, managing director of National Geographic Interactive, the Society has offered payments to "a handful" of photographers who worked under "contractual anomalies that somebody along the line approved." The sum offered is a less-than-princely $20 for a 20-year license for each photo, to cover the CD-ROM and a variety of other electronic reuses; no other photographers--and no writers at all--are being offered even $1 a year.
The "Dear Magazine Contributor" kiss-off letter does promise unspecified payments for some other Society new media projects, but not for this one. The given reason? "Because the CD-ROM archive consists of an exact image of every page as it was originally published, this reissuance (or reprint) is not a `further editorial use' of material such as requires additional payment to the photographers whose contracts commit the Society to payment under those circumstances."
Maybe. But while the photographers and writers spurned consider that question, and the magazine, in essence, tells them "Our lawyers can lick your lawyers," here's one for the Society's board: Is National Geographic the kind of organization that ought to reuse the work of those it calls "colleagues," in a way never anticipated when the work was commissioned, without further payment?
The CHICAGO TRIBUNE's WomaNews editor has lost so many regulars over the Trib's rights grab that he's apparently on the prowl for decent writers who'll accept the terms he's forced to offer, under which the Trib gets to syndicate and otherwise reuse articles electronically and in print. Contracts Watch first heard several months ago from several freelancers offended at a broadcast e-mail message from a writer suggesting that they jump in where others have jumped ship. According to recent reports, the head-hunting is still going on, indicating that the Trib continues to feel the impact of freelancers who reject corporate bullying.
Perhaps Trib executives should listen to a persuasive commentary by writer Wendy Kaminer, which was broadcast by National Public Radio earlier this month. Among Kaminer's points was that the public will suffer from publishers' greed because "when independent writers are driven out of business by the loss of royalties and other rights to profit from their work, the only writers left will be management-pleasing employees...[with a] tendency to self-censor."
In case there's any question about freelance writers' importance to the industry: The Society of American Travel Writers Foundation announced the 13th annual Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition awards earlier this month. According to the folks at the foundation, more than half the recipients of awards for writing went to freelancers.
COOKING LIGHT, according to a writer, agreed to pencil into an article contract a one-year limit on Web use of an article with an option to renew. The magazine pays for Website and certain other reuses through the Authors Registry.
SESAME STREET PARENTS posted an article on its Website without benefit of a license from the author. It happened because the piece was done under an old contract, written before the magazine started offering small payments for limited Web use. When called by the author, the publisher promptly promised a fee to make good on the error.
At FAMILYFUN, owner DISNEY apparently thinks freelancers, like children, should be seen but not heard: Word is the bosses have forbidden editors to back down from their contract's demand for just about every right in sight, and from an indemnification clause that makes the writer liable even when not at fault. FamilyFun editors used to earn high grades for their collaborative attitude, but as long as they offer unreasonable terms and say "take it or leave it," writers who think of themselves as grownups are best off leaving it.
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Received on Thu May 29 1997 - 12:46:01 GMT
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